City of Bones by Cassandra Clare begins with a storage cupboard lit up by the crowded dance floor of Pandemonium Club. Fifteen year old artist Clary watches three shadow hunters rid Earth of a strange blue haired daemon, although somehow her friend Simon can't see them. When she returns home late, her mother cracks and declares that they are going to take a holiday away from broken curfews in their New York home. But within days her mother has vanished, Clary is living with the shadow hunters (still breaking curfews) and secrets start to be told. Because every story is true: vampires, fairies, warlocks and sword wielding shadow hunters all live in Clary's dimension. And with the sight she can see them.

At first, I didn't like City of Bones very much at all. It actually took me about two thirds of the book to begin to fall in love with this story. Until then I was very much looking forward to writing a cynical review about a cliché-ridden story which presumably wormed its way up the bestseller lists with Stephanie Meyer's complimentary review on the front cover. But irritatingly the plot came together and damn it, I had to devour a trough full of humble pie and agree with her. Enjoying things can be so galling.

It really is a rich story world to fall in love with, filled with complex characters. I particularly loved side character Jace. He really has a past and an interesting personality that only got more intricate as the plot twisted. And some of the dialogue was great, for example, "Move it along teenagers. The only person who gets to canoodle in my bedroom is my magnificent self."

Meanwhile, my main complaint about the first two thirds was the focus on the Simon/Clary/Jace love triangle. It is phenomenon that we see with Katniss Everdeen and Bella Swan (The Hunger Games and Twilight): two boys fall desperately in love with a girl who doesn't notice and is just so modest that she hasn't even considered that fact that either boy maybe attracted to her. Let's face it, it's everybody's dream to have two people unconditionally in love with them and it probably hasn't ever happened outside of a young adult fiction book. It is only the later developments and twists that make this love triangle acceptable and prevent make me from ranting about it for more than one paragraph.

So basically this is the sort of book that you really need to stick it out with, probably because it takes time to adapt to such a new setting. Keep reading through the annoying love triangle because the characters and plot twists make it worthwhile. Now I will just finish my humble pie before purchasing the next book in the series.

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